1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for reliability evaluation and performance analysis of an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone network.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, in a circuit-switched network, which is connection-oriented, the reliability of the network is measured based on the reliability of T1/T3 circuits, i.e., the percentage that a T1/T3 circuit is fully connected. When a network component fails in the circuit-switched network, it will only affect the T1/T3 circuits served by the failed network component Each T1/T3 circuit is treated independently when evaluating the impact of a network component failure on the network performance and when analyzing the network outage, such as FCC reportable incidents (based on the lines affected and duration of the outage). The traditional series-parallel reliability block diagram (RBD) model is usually used to analyze the reliability of an individual T1/T3 circuit. On the other hand, a packet-switched IP network introduces reliability issues that do not arise in circuit-switched networks. For example, in addition to the possibility that connectivity may be lost between the network elements, IP networks can introduce the possibility of induced performance degradation during failure conditions, which consumers may perceive as an outage even when connectivity exists. The impact of these perceived outages may not be limited to consumers served by the failed network elements, but may possibly affect the entire population served by the network.